


in my room

by officialhandmaiden



Category: The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: F/M, Gen, Missing Moments, POV Cardan Greenbriar, cardan has a big fat crush on jude, i tagged jude even though she doesn't make an appearance except in cardan's fervent imaginings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 11:12:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19172101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/officialhandmaiden/pseuds/officialhandmaiden
Summary: "Though I am across the floor from him, my gaze strays often to the bed and to the boy sleeping there."Jude is gone when he wakes.





	in my room

**Author's Note:**

> title taken (embarrassingly) from an insane clown posse song, though the subject matter could not be anymore different than what I've written here.

Jude is gone when he wakes. 

 

The room is dark, and the sheets-they reek of her-are twisted around his legs. The dull throbbing of his head, the tenderness of his wound, make him slow to rise. The night before is a blur. He can remember flames, the press of lips against his throat, blood blossoming flowers. He remembers Jude; the weight of her hand. And with his head on her pillow he had looked up and begged for kisses. Shame fills him; the kind that makes his skin itch, the kind that makes him lash out. 

 

Still, he buries his nose in the fabric of her pillowcase, breathing in the scent of her sweat, the cloying chemicals of the mortal soap she uses. He imagines it, her dark hair heavy across the pillow. Oh, there’s that shame again. His eyes snapped open, and he flings the pillow away from him. Sitting up, he rubs the grit from his eyes, and drags himself from bed. 

 

He can hear the guards in the hallway. The clanging armour, soft murmurs- one of them flirting with a chambermaid. He sighs. He walks to the window and opens it. The sun is just setting, the horizon like a slit vein bleeding out the last of daylight. It hurts his eyes, he looks away. 

 

At the door someone knocks, “Your Highness?”

 

“Come in.”

 

A maid, she tells him his new rooms are not ready yet, and it would be best if he remained here, and would he like her to get him anything?

 

“Something to wear. Something to eat.” 

 

She hurries back shortly after, placing the tray down on a cluttered table, she takes with her a few cups, then leaves as quickly as she came. Another follows soon after, laying out his clothes on the unmade bed. He dismisses her with a wave and the door shuts quietly behind her. 

 

Alone, he picks at the food, and looks around. The room is filthy. As gone as he was last night he had still noticed it. He would never have figured Jude to be so slovenly. Dirty dishes, clothes, and books scattered everywhere. It smells too, like rotting fruit. He thinks her so disciplined-the puppet master in the shadows- it’s strange to see this side of her; a mortal teenage girl with a messy bedroom. 

 

Curiosity wells up inside him, too tempting to deny. He looks at the door, making sure it doesn’t burst open with Jude about to find him rifling through her things. She doesn’t of course, too busy with doing whatever it is she does. Though he considered it only fair, she never admitted it, but he knew she had found her way inside his room one night. How else would she have known about the piece of paper with her name? A litany of  _ Jude  _ poured out from his own hand if only to get her out of his head. 

 

First, he picks through the papers scattered on the table; nothing interesting, just dry missives to and from the Living Council. Crumbled rough drafts with scratched out phrases and ink stains. Her handwriting spidery, uneven. Then, notes between her and the Court of Shadows. They wrote of little things, court gossip, inside jokes. Boring. 

 

Disappointed, Cardan frowned, he was hoping to discover something a little more scandalous- an illicit love letter. He thought of the way she refused to look at Locke, of the way Locke’s eyes followed her as she walked away. He thought of the fox grin that stretched across Locke’s face when he caught Cardan watching him watching her.

 

He moved to the desk, but again found nothing of interest. No love letters, no journal, not even a scribble addressed to her family. Nothing personal, just work. In the drawers he finds rowan berries and salt, a blade of cold iron that burned when he accidentally brushed the tip, empty ink pots, pen nibs, and a few loose vials of poison. 

 

Looking over his shoulder, still wary of being caught, he begins sifting through her wardrobe. All black. None of the pretty dresses she wore when she attended court with her twin at her hip. He remembers laughing at them both, little wallflowers planted in the corner.  _ What’s the difference between mortals and worms, _ he had asked loud enough for them to hear, _ worms have enough sense to stay in the dirt. _

 

Digging deeper he finds colorful scraps of material in an array of colors- pink, yellow, green- mortal underthings. He studies them, curious, but they’d hold more interest if Jude was filling them. He shuts the drawer. 

 

Cardan sighs. He’d thought this would be more fun. He had learned more about Jude from Vivi’s offhand remarks. He sits back down on the couch and finishes his breakfast. It’s fully dark now, and he can hear the courtiers stirring. 

 

Undressing, he leaves his clothes where they fall, and goes to take a bath. The water is hot, and steam fills the room. He finds a bar of rosemary soap, and pictures Jude in the bath with him, her skin slick and flushed. A tendril of her wet hair would stick in the hollow her throat, coiled there, like a snake. 

 

Dried and dressed, he runs his fingers through his hair once, and stalks from the room. His guard falling in line behind, and beside him. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!


End file.
